Day 9: Shame

Brandon (Michael Fassbender) is a successful worker bee with a nice apartment. His life must be ideal, right? Nothing is ever that easy, come on now. He suffers (and he does genuinely seem to be suffering) from sex addiction which is threatening to tear down everything he has built for himself. And to make matters worse his sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) comes to stay with him. She is her own bundle of problems, so the two together do not exactly help each other.

The film follows Brandon’s gradual deterioration which seems to be somewhat influenced by the presence of his sister. They seem to have an odd relationship and you get from the way they are with each other that they didn’t grow up well together. She is depressed and appears to be very dependent on other people, while he has attempted to shut himself off from others mainly in order to deal with his addiction. The two obviously don’t mix well and it creates unbearable pressure on them both, in different ways. Brandon throws out all his porn (so much porn, just so much) in what seems to be a quit-cold-turkey move but it obviously doesn’t work and he goes in search of sex. Unable to get into another bar he heads across to what I can only describe as a loads-of-white-guys-having-sex bar and he is ‘pleasured’ (and I say it like that because he doesn't seem to enjoy the encounter so much as he needs it to get through) by a gentleman there. Then he heads off for a massive shagathon with two women (which he also does not seem to enjoy) before returning home. Sissy is hurt by Brandon’s words (calling her a burden and a weight on him). She clearly wants a connection with her brother but he’s not in any state to give it to her and she doesn’t appear to have anyone. This all culminates in her attempting suicide in his apartment. He finds her, gets her to the hospital and she survives.

From start to finish the film is depressing. I’d never really considered sex addiction before but it seems brutal and not to be laughed at. What I quite liked was that there was no hopeful message at all in the film, no ‘it gets better’ moment. Quite often filmmakers tack on a "but it's ok, they got sorted eventually" but that didn't happen here. It’s an interesting and honest portrayal of two people who are having the worst time in their lives, which I think makes it more true to life than some films. You don’t get the feeling that either of them will really be ok and that’s how life is for a lot of people. Not everyone comes through the negative, sometimes people just live within it. Or they get out.

“We’re not bad people. We just come from a bad place.”

8/10